It’s only day 3 of October 2020 but already, what a month it’s been. Trump and Melania tested positive for Covid-19 and, in a knee-jerk reaction, the media immediately related their infections to the Air Force1 flight last Wednesday because it was the day Hope Hicks tested positive.
But medical professionals — and those who listen to them — know the median incubation period for COVID-19 is 4.9 to 7 days, with a range of up to 14 days. Though possible, it’s uncommon for people to show symptoms as soon as 24 hours after exposure. Therefore Hicks was most likely infected some 4 to 5 days before her Wednesday test.
That would take the timeline back to Saturday last week and, as it happens, that was the day when the Off-White Residence held a function for presumptive seat-filler, Amy Coney Barrett. Attending the indoor-outdoor event with Trump and Melania were GOP senators, a crowd of republican notables including wealthy donors and others like the Notre Dame University President Father John Jenkins, plus a number of staffers including Hope Hicks. In a short video of the occasion (embedded in Charles Jay’s story), there was one masked guest and no social distancing.
Might this have been the super-spreader event? Of those in Trump’s orbit who have tested positive for Covid-19 since last Wednesday, all attended that function. In addition to himself, Melania and Hope Hicks, the list of positives included Father Jenkins, Bill Stepien (Trump campaign manager), Kellyanne Conway, Thom Tillis and Mike Lee.
Of those eight, the one garnering the most attention is of course Trump, but there are two others whose absence from the senate will impact on McConnell’s efforts to ram Barrett’s confirmation through his chamber before the election.
It isn’t that the quarantined Tillis and Lee temporarily bring down McConnell’s majority to just one and that Susan Collins might stick with a nay vote if she feels threatened enough by Sarah Gideon, because there’s still Pence to break the tie.
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INTERRUPTED FOR UPDATE: Ron Johnson and Rick Scott have both tested positive which wipes out McConnell’s majority.
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The real problem is in the Judiciary Committee. Nominees must be approved by that committee before a Senate floor vote can be held to confirm them.
In this September 30 article, Politico describes where Barrett currently stands in the nomination process.
The elaborate rituals of a Supreme Court nomination, which usually unfold over weeks or months, are being compressed to mere days under the Republican schedule. On Tuesday, Barrett held nine meetings with GOP senators, and she is expected to hold a similar number on Wednesday, meaning she’ll have met with roughly a third of the Senate GOP in just two days. The FBI background check on Barrett is expected to be completed before her Senate Judiciary Committee hearing begins on Oct. 12, according to a Republican aide.
Let’s step aside from Barrett for a moment and take a look at that committee. The partisan makeup is 12 republicans to 10 Democrats. But with Tillis and Lee sidelined, the numbers are currently even with 10 members from each party. This is where it gets interesting and a great deal will depend on what happens in the next seven days. Let’s take a look at the possibilities.
First and foremost, everyone who attended the Barrett function, whether or not they’ve tested positive so far, should be self-isolating because all of them were exposed to the virus. That includes every member of Congress who attended. But that evidently is not happening. McConnell couldn’t cope with the balance of power massively shifting to the Democrats if 12 GOP senators were all absent in quarantine at the same time.
On the Hugh Hewitt radio show early Friday morning, before Tillis and Lee revealed they’d tested positive, McConnell said, “Our biggest enemy, obviously, is the coronavirus, keeping everybody healthy and well and in place to do our jobs.”
McConnell’s hopes for keeping his caucus healthy were shattered after Tillis and Lee made their announcements later that same day. GOP anxiety levels rocketed up the scale as the Wall Street Journal reported:
“The timing was already difficult to get Barrett across the finish line.…It’s a razor-thin margin,” said one GOP Senate staffer. “If anyone else in the Republican caucus gets sick this week, we have lit ourselves on fire.”
With only 50 of his senators available now, the short term outlook for getting Barrett through the process before November 3 is not promising. There’s only a couple of scenarios that could work for them and both are contingent on a fair amount of luck given how aggressive this virus is.
Barrett’s passage through the process is unaffected
- Tillis and Lee experience very mild symptoms and return to work by October 12.
This is the Senate GOP’s Plan A as evidenced by this New York Times report:
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the Judiciary Committee chairman, said on Friday that his panel would begin four days of public hearings on Judge Barrett’s nomination on Oct. 12, as scheduled. Senator Tillis and Senator Lee said they would isolate for 10 days, which would enable them to emerge in time for the hearings.
This is the rose-colored glasses scenario since it ignores whatever health issues these guys may have. For example, Lee is carrying a little extra weight while Tillis is 60 and a long time smoker. That may not sound so bad until you consider that the young and fit Hope Hicks is reportedly very ill.
- Only one of them becomes really sick while the other recovers quickly and returns to DC by or soon after October 12.
If only one is off sick, Chairman Lindsay Graham will still have a majority to go ahead with the public hearings. But in either case, they’ll be cutting it very fine. Both should be quarantining for 14 days at least but instead they’re cutting the time dangerously short in an attempt to accommodate Trump’s and McConnell’s schedule.
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INTERRUPTED FOR UPDATE: Well that scenario option didn’t last long. McConnell has notified his senators that the Senate will be in “pro-forma session” (translation: pretend session lasting as long as it takes to turn the lights on and off each day) until October 19 on which day he’s ordered all his senators to be healthy and turn up on time. (Personally I think he’s taking this whole Senate Dictator thing a little too far...)
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Barrett’s passage through the process is delayed
- Tillis and Lee are both too sick to return to work by October 19 but recover by mid November.
Barrett’s confirmation goes through in the lame duck session after the election. Trump (if well enough) and McConnell will be mightily pissed off with this delay because both specifically want Barrett seated before November.
Worth noting at this point is that McConnell cannot appoint replacements to fill committee seats made vacant by illness. If he could, that’s what he’d be doing already. He also wants the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings to begin as scheduled on October 12. However, the coronavirus might well have a different schedule in train already.
Barrett’s nomination is derailed
- I feel confident that all the republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were present at the Roseless Garden function last Saturday. That being the case, any number of them could test positive in the next 7 days. If one or more of the remaining ten fall sick, and if three or more of them are too sick to return by October 12, Democrats would hold the majority in the committee.
Graham could go ahead with the scheduled public hearings but he could not win a committee vote to approve Barrett’s nomination while Dems outnumber his members. Consequently, he and McConnell are talking about holding the hearings remotely but Chuck Schumer is standing firmly against that option and it looks like he may have procedure on his side.
How far the Democrats could advance their cause in this circumstance will likely depend on some old and dusty rules. Could Dianne Feinstein, Ranking Member and Vice Chairperson, call for a committee vote on Barrett’s nomination and defeat it while Dems hold a majority position? If so, does the process mandate that public committee hearings take place before such a vote can be held? If it does, Lindsay Graham would obviously postpone the hearings and the whole process would grind to a halt.
If that stalemate continued into December — and I realise the odds of that happening would get smaller and smaller with each passing day — but if it were to happen, Barrett’s nomination would be voided at the end of the congressional session on December 31.
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We are massively overdue a change of luck, or if not luck, then a window opening on an opportunity for us to grab an advantage. But right now I’ll settle for believing in ghosts, specifically the ghost of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Notorious RBG, Heaven-bent on keeping her vacated Supreme Court seat out of the hands of the grasping GOP. It’s an image that might well haunt McConnell as his scheme to fill her seat quickly slips through his fingers like ghostly mist.